The Illustrated London Reading Book eBook

OLD ENGLISH HOUND.

The dog we now call the Staghound appears to answer
better than any other to the description given to
us of the old English Hound, which was so much valued
when the country was less enclosed, and the numerous
and extensive forests were the harbours of the wild
deer. This hound, with the harrier, were for
many centuries the only hunting dogs.

[Illustration: HEAD OF THE OLD ENGLISH HOUND.]

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SHEPHERD’S DOG.

Instinct and education combine to fit this dog for
our service: the pointer will act without any
great degree of instruction, and the setter will crouch;
but the Sheep Dog, especially if he has the example
of an older one, will, almost without the teaching
of his master, become everything he could wish, and
be obedient to every order, even to the slightest
motion of the hand. If the shepherd’s dog
be but with his master, he appears to be perfectly
content, rarely mingling with his kind, and generally
shunning the advances of strangers; but the moment
duty calls, his eye brightens, he springs up with eagerness,
and exhibits a sagacity, fidelity, and devotion rarely
equalled even by man himself.

[Illustration: HEAD OF THE SHEPHERDS DOG.]

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BULL-DOG.

Of all dogs, none surpass in obstinacy and ferocity
the Bull-dog. The head is broad and thick, the
lower jaw generally projects so that the under teeth
advance beyond the upper, the eyes are scowling, and
the whole expression calculated to inspire terror.
It is remarkable for the pertinacity with which it
maintains its hold of any animal it may have seized,
and is, therefore, much used in the barbarous practice
of bull-baiting, so common in some countries, and
but lately abolished in England.

[Illustration: HEAD OF THE BULL-DOG.]

[Illustration]

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LORD BACON.

[Illustration: Letter I.]

In those prescient views by which the genius of Lord
Bacon has often anticipated the institutions and the
discoveries of succeeding times, there was one important
object which even his foresight does not appear to
have contemplated. Lord Bacon did not foresee
that the English language would one day be capable
of embalming all that philosophy can discover, or
poetry can invent; that his country would at length
possess a national literature of its own, and that
it would exult in classical compositions, which might
be appreciated with the finest models of antiquity.
His taste was far unequal to his invention. So
little did he esteem the language of his country,
that his favourite works were composed in Latin; and
he was anxious to have what he had written in English
preserved in that “universal language which may
last as long as books last.”